On the third day, the Japan beach soccer national team had two practice sessions, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, to prepare for the International Friendly Match against U.S. which will be on the following day. The team started the training at 9am with warming up exercises. After a running session and passing exercises, heavy rain started suddenly. The players continued their session despite this sudden rain.

The weather was changeable and the strong sun light came out after a while. The players moved on to tactical training using the full pitch. Following on from the previous days training, they had another session especially for defense to strengthen their techniques. The players also had offense training including new squad members to check carefully combination play to make good finishing.

As the last session in the morning, they had shooting practice. They practiced a series of shooting forms such as making a shot after dribbling from side wings, making overhead shots, free kicks and penalty shootouts. They enjoyed finding the back of the net in the practice and the team finished its morning training after two hours.

At 2:30 p.m., the U.S. Beach Soccer National Team, whom Japan will play against for the International Friendly Match, had official training in the match venue whose auditorium has just been completed. Even though they had arrived in Okinawa after a long journey last night, they had a proper training spending 1.5 hours from warming-up to tactical session, checking the pitch.

U.S. head coach commented about Japan with smile “It’s a good team. They can beat us or we can even beat them; we are excited to have this match against a good rival.” He also mentioned the hot weather in Okinawa “We don’t have any problem with it. It’s just similar to Miami,” and showed his confidence in his team’s victory.

Japan had a final training session at 4 p.m., which is the kickoff time of the match tomorrow. With strong winds, the team had an internal practice match to check their combination for 1 hour and then had another shooting session. The International Friendly Match will be kicked-off at 4 p.m. of 20 and 21 June.

Head Coach and Players’ Comments

Marcelo MENDES, Japan Beach Soccer National Team Head Coach
We have prepared well for the upcoming International Friendly Match. I think we can check how much we have improved some of our issues such as defense and finishing which appeared to be the challenge in our Asian Qualifying Round. I appreciate the audience coming and supporting each of our players in the matches; it will be a powerful push for them to get motivated for the coming FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup. We will keep our passion to win and put 100 percent of our best to make it a good match.

FP   MOREIRA Ozu (TOKYO LEQUIOS BS)
I had such a bitter experience that we couldn’t beat Brazil in the quarter final of the previous World Cup. This time, what we aim at is not to be one of the last 8 teams, but to be the top team. Firstly, we will show the Japanese audience our beach soccer matches for two days and I’m happy if they find beach soccer very interesting. Apart from our victories, I personally want to score by overhead shots and show how much fun it is to watch and play beach soccer.

FP   GOTO Takasuke (TOKYO LEQUIOS BS)
We are having a friendly match tomorrow, but I think it is important for us to play seriously as if it is the first match against Portugal. This is a personal story, but yesterday my granddad passed away and I cannot attend his funeral due to the match tomorrow. So I just want to score in the match thinking about him. For the audience, I want to show some attractions of beach soccer like scoring a lot more than football matches and acrobatic play on the beach.

JFA-TV

Schedule

International Friendly Match　vs.  U.S. Beach Soccer National Team (Ginowan Tropicalbeach）

Sat. 20 June 16:00    v  U.S. Beach Soccer National Team
Sun. 21 June 16:00   v  U.S. Beach Soccer National Team
Ginowan-city Tropicalbeach/Okinawa
*Admission Free
More information

Future Schedule